1UP: putting social networking into context
I’ve waited a few days for it to settle - but it looks like the world’s first digital lifestyle aggregator is live! It’s called 1UP.com - and put out by Ziff-Davis Media.
Yes - THAT Ziff-Davis. After selling off their on-line properties to CNet (including Dan Farber and the ZDNet crowd) - Ziff-Davis is back in the on-line business in a big way.
They appraoched me in December (thanks to Geoff Workman) to help them build a killer, no holds barred, get a lot of attention and go out on a limb - cutting edge system - which would combine social networking, personal publishing and what ended up to be 26 portal front-doors.
The site is about gamers and gaming.
It puts social networking into a context of gamers by matching them up to each other - based upon what games they own, what games they want to play and even matches wish-trade lists.
There are some NEW things for social networkers - like a PeoplePlace - that feature both People and Club ‘pings’ and a nice Facewall search results screen. Gamers can search for folks via name, location, games, interests, age or game genre - or any combination.
There’s all sorts of folks coming to the site - from wunderkid editors and gamerdudes to grannie gamers and metro sexual gamers.]
There’s an 11,000 game database built in, and your typical game portal features - like cheats, downloads, reviews, top 10 lists, news - blah blah blah - the list of features goes on and on.
I’m having fun with customers - creating custom clubs, special promos and eventually new kinds of tournaments. We created allot in four-five months, so we’re not done yet, but you can expect this system to support RSS, FOAF, OpenReviews and every other new format coming out representing new kinds of micro-content and communications.
This will be THE site that all the other gaming sites will copy in the next 12 months. In the mean time - there’s plenty of other ways of positioning DLAs - into web services, content, on-line communities and all sorts of brands.
Hardware and software companies will ALL offer DLAs within five years - so the only question is: “who comes first?” In each sector DLAs will change the playing field - making it possible for after-market revenues, viral marketing and sticky happy customers.
So now all my ranting and raving may make sense.
Gamers review games, like to buy things and certainly want to interact with each others. Watch for a traveling roadshow to connect cyberspace to meatspace “meet your cyber buddy at the Cow Palace!”
Gamers are blogers now, have lots of friends and are joing Clubs in droves. Oh yah - for every action a gamer does, he/she gets points - which are then used for contests and to redeem objects.
So the next time someone asks “what’s a DLA” - you just tell them - 1UP.com.
So what’s YOUR context? Been wondering how ot make sense of social networking and personal publishing? Let Broadband Mechanics get you there.
We plan on building lots of these DLAs over the next five years - before we get bought out. Apple and Microsoft are doing it - so should YOU! So we’re open for business - interested parties inquire here.
BTW - in case you’re wondering - I’m “TheMacroMind“.
